hurricanes and valentines
by transparent fawn
Summary: catbeck one-shot. - cat valentine is a hurricane, so she breaks down and passes through until she's left him standing on her shore, isolated and in ruin. now  he thinks  he knows how she feels.


so, last week, i survived hurricane igor and a clash of three other storms. i honestly have been feeling the worst, so what better way to chronicle the storm and my feelings with some fiction? also, it gets kind of morbid / dark as it explores more of the idea of cat's borderline (in my opinion), so, i guess, be warned? i don't even know.

. . .

The storm hits the night before and brings in heavy rain that knocked against the window panes with such force that each tap resounds like exploding bombs thrown by stony faced soldiers wanting only the destruction of everything around them. But they were focused a little less on the physical walls than they were interested in the deterioration of the mental cinderblocks built up around every one. Cat Valentine stares, her eyes glazed over with a morbid curiosity and shaken movements from her body. She swallows, but catches herself, centering each uncontrollable shake inwards until she could feel her stomach literally threatening to burst out from under her skin. Cat rubs her arms, trying to suppress the goosebumps popping up over the surface of her pale skin, before she turns to her friends resembling statues as they paused in rehearsal.

"It sounds as though the rain is about to shatter through the glass," Cat remarks, but she doesn't sound all too concerned, and this was how people knew her. She smiles and blinks butterfly kisses to the dry and tense air. Tori lets out a shaky breath along with whispered concerns for her family and the house. Rehearsal is not a success that night, and Cat finds herself only slightly impatient to leave. However, she does not voice it to the extent of Tori's and Robbie's yelps. Even Jade couldn't hide the faint tremble of her lips, though it was not out of fear, but a pressured reaction from the overall mood surrounding the room.

The only ones who seemed to have it all together are Beck and André- but even the musical genius struggled when his grandmother called him every few moments, yelling in his ear about the storm and how the ceiling was to collapse on her head taking away what little life she lived. He apologizes when he leaves early to go tend to her. Robbie doesn't when he leaves seconds later with lame excuses that changed every step of the way out of the building. It doesn't take much longer for Trina to forcibly drag Tori from the rehearsal, exclaiming how she hates driving in horrible weather and how she would simply die if she was not home under her warm blankets, watching her favorite film (which was maybe a little too dirty for Cat to even to place pictures in her head. She shudders at the mere thought.).

Jade was determined to be the last standing, but as Cat stares into the girl's dark eyes, unmoving and with very little emotion on display in her tiny pupils, Jade snaps. "What are you looking at, fire hazard!" Jade bites her tongue not moments later when Cat exclaims her signature phrase, "what does that mean!" Beck runs a strong arm down Jade's shoulders all the way down to her wrists, and every bit of tension seems to leave her body immediately. Cat could feel her internal organs sinking to places they didn't belong as Beck speaks calmly into his girlfriend's ear just loud enough for Cat to hear or rather, eavesdrop upon.

"Shh, it's alright, look, I can take you home now. We'll just enjoy the storm as a background track," Beck's eyes flicker over to Cat, locking her in place and drawing her forwards like hooks woven in her rib cage. "I'll call you when I get home and we can talk until you fall asleep. It's okay, your family will make it back safely, alright? Worst case is, they'll be stuck in the airport overnight. No way a plane would fly in such horrible conditions."

Beck's mouth continues to move, but Cat found herself drowning with the white noise of cracks and bangs exploding in her ear drums. Her eyes, however, drink into Beck's and she feels every single compulsion to shake and just let go becoming overwhelming, itching at her veins and pulsating throughout her entire body. Beck kisses the moody girl's cheek and a rare smile creases Jade's stained lips. Cat feels as a shadowed voyeur upon their intimate moment, but Jade feels no threat as she holds Beck's hand tightly enough to let Cat know of the flaws this black clad girl had, but loosely enough to convey the boasting confidence as she displays her 'property'.

Beck pauses at the door and looks towards Cat. "You got a ride?" It takes Cat a while to turn around from her rooted position and cough. She fumbles with her phone, "I'll get one." she replies. Beck's offer is half way out of his mouth before Cat shakes her head, _she's not important_, she insists. Before the boy could process what she means, his hand is yanked in an almost dislocating fashion and he barely sends a wave good bye before the door slams shut from the wind behind him.

Cat glances out the window and she could just imagine the entire structure collapsing about her. Her arms instinctively grab themselves to prevent her body from breaking. But before her mind can engulf her, a loud and long car horn sounds like a fog horn from a battleship. It's her father and she quickens her pace to run outside, almost tripping in her four inch heels- her skin recoiling from each drop of rain on her overly exposed arms and legs.

When she throws herself into the car, her father doesn't say a word and so Cat apologizes. She already knows every swear and every exclamation of harsh anger lying behind his muddy eyes, glued onto the few feet in front of the car as he drove.

Cat Valentine honestly believes the silence cuts more than screams and curses of anger and frustration.

.

It's not even an hour and a half later as Cat presses her naked back to the wall. She wraps her bright pink Snuggie around her petite body which isn't quite as warm as she wants it to be. Her pear laptop lays upon her crossed legs, and she knows it's burning her thighs, but she doesn't quite feel it through the numbness in the top layers of her skin. She wonders if she could just get rid of the fat that hung over her bones, would she be able to feel just the same as Tori or Jade? Or was Cat always to play pretend like an hourglass- each sand of grain ticking and tocking the time left until her self-destruction turns itself upon her.

She logs onto messenger and quickly removes the tape she's placed over her built-in webcam (you never know who might hack into your webcam while you are changing). Her chest constricts as her brain knowingly scans the scattered list of those online for him. She thinks she's delirious and she sips green tea from a white and pink sprinkled ice cream themed mug. He's online. Cat eagerly clicks his name and then waits. She always waits. She texts him during school and she thinks she annoys him, which is why she waits. Because she wants to feel missed, she wants to feel like maybe some one thinks about her to the same extent she thinks of them (which isn't quite so often- humanity had a way of being a pendulum swinging between every one and everything being just so lovely lovely lovely and, most of the time, being absolutely disgusting).

Her tea drains from her mug and her eyes adjust to the faint lcd light. She grips her Snuggie tighter to her body, but even then, she couldn't help the burning feeling of wanting to bury herself underneath the dirt. As the window in her room let out a soft whistle here and there with little welcomed warning, it took every bit of strength she had not to run over and let herself drown in the storm. But it also took every small collective of strength she had to move.

It's midnight before she sees the writing symbol next to his name. Cat's heart suddenly finds the motivation to beat wildly until she understands what it is to feel and the heat on her legs is excruciating. But honestly, she's just happy she's feeling a little more alive.

_Hey Cat! You got home alright?_

_hey youuu~ yeah, i got super soaked though! so much rain!_

It's a few minutes before he replies, but she sighs in contentment, no longer aching to fill a need she wasn't entirely sure of any more.

_Yeah, totally. You want to go on webcam?_

_i'd love to!_ (She curses herself because she knew she replied to quickly, and then she's annoyed at how she could let herself act like such a fool, like a complete lovesick fool.) _if you wannnnt~._

Cat waits for the invitation, meanwhile, looking into the mirror across her bed. Her expression was dead pan and the dark circles below her eyes seemed to be the only color upon her face. Cat flashes a smile, but it fades rather quickly. She was incapable of being lovely. She was a mess- her hair in a stray bun, nothing but left over mascara matting her eye lashes, and her Snuggie doing nothing but covering every single flaw of her body, while adding the illusion of something possibly bigger hiding underneath.

A droning ring and a pop and a grin flies onto her lips. She's feeling again and a little light reaches her eyes when his camera adjusts and he is lying down on his side, his hair the perfect balance of wild and messy. He gives a slight wave. "Hey." he's casual and Cat tries to mimic the same mood within her glassy tone.

"Hi, Beck!" and she's almost talking in a higher pitch as if she were singing every word. He chuckles lightly.

"Nice bun. It's different." he comments and Cat unconsciously raises a hand to touch it, as if to reassure herself that there was in fact, a messy ballerina bun adorned on the top of her head. She blinks and then reacts as expected.

"What's that supposed to mean!" she almost screams. "Is it ugly!"

"No, no!" He recomposes himself, wiping away shocked eyes and softening his expression. "I think it looks very pretty on you."

Cat's mouth parts slightly and she doesn't know what to say because she feels as though he might be right. She thinks, for once, that maybe the face staring back at her isn't entirely a repulsive blur and that maybe, there's a little truth. "Oh wow," she mutters, filling the silence between them. She's not focusing on anything but she stares into herself and thinks her body just might be a beautiful home to live in. Her thighs twitch and she shifts position, outstretching short legs, but now Cat feels maybe she doesn't need heels and make up and twenty different changes of clothes to look beautiful. She glows.

"Thanks."

A raindrop hits the windowpane like an echoing cymbal and the two launch into a discussion about music. That seems to be the basis of every single one of their talks because that's how they communicate every single ghost without actually exposing them to camera or through written messages. She giggles, sometimes soundlessly, when he shows her songs of tap dancers for drummers and an eclectic wide array of artists and her library grows so much in size. She almost feels guilty when she sends him songs of happier times and broken mess, and not necessarily what she uses to entrap her feelings in.

And then she asks him after catching the thirty second time he has warily raised a hand through his wild hair and tried to steady a shaking exhalation, "are you okay?".

He smiles and he doesn't break when he says, "I will be." Then he excuses himself with a headache. Cat smiles faintly, offering him a massage in return for a favor. He all but pauses when he agrees, promising to make it up to her one day. As he signs off at about three in the morning, she's no longer quite as vivid or lovely as before.

Cat Valentine doesn't really know what she wants.

.

Cat knows there will be no school due to the viscous hurricane and threat of collision of three different storms, but she sets her alarm for six o'clock anyways. Though, it was of very little use as she barely drifted off to sleep before the loud and incessant ringing rung into her petite ears to signify it was time to 'wake up' and jump from bed to greet the thick morning weather. But Cat does not move, twitching her foot or fingers or elbows every few minutes to prevent herself from falling back into a dream world.

She found her world was less like a dream and more like a nightmare. She neither lived nor slept through life, but rather, she was. Her eyes, half open and blurry, scanned the ceiling, making shapes from shadows as the wind hit against her walls, calling her to self-destruct faster and faster and faster. Her entire being feels numb, as if unable to even breathe. (_is she even breathing? how does one breathe? maybe breathing isn't really necessary._) Her mind is her greatest weaknesses as one train of thought leads to another and soon it's ten in the morning and the only thing Cat can hear is the war of water and wind just outside of the shelter she's in.

She removes herself from under the covers- _how did she get under them?_- and she feels oddly freezing to touch in just her underwear. So she adorns her pink floral print fleece blanket as a dress styled for a greek goddess, but she doesn't feel any lovelier. Her toes crack and she trudges down the stairs, her father is at work, surprisingly, as her eyes register the empty driveway. Her brother had gone to his girlfriend's house the night before. Cat was alone, though, making the creak in the hallway a little more ominous and a little more mocking. She was always alone while everybody else had some one else or something else to confide themselves into. She's just a rough cut brick with nowhere to go.

Cat continues to the kitchen and she isn't entirely sure why she walked there in the first place. She stops in the middle of the room by the marble island counter, grazing the pads of her fingertips across the clean counter. She runs them over every crack in the surface and wonders how many cracks made up the solid material. She doesn't really think too long, though, it was pointless trying to compare herself to things that weren't as universally purposeful as she tricks herself into believing most of the time.

So she makes pancakes and cakes her skin accidentally in the mix and spills the substance on the counter. In the end she makes two pancakes; the first being burnt and the second, broken and not entirely cooked. She lays them down on an ornate blue plate on the messy counter and stares at them. Her stomach does nothing, her mouth is dry. So she pokes at them a few times, wondering how it was possible for her to ruin everything she touched. Her brain beats in a quick message that maybe she wants to eat, but when she lifts a bite to her mouth, Cat isn't really hungry any more.

Cat Valentine concludes that skeletons don't really need the same things to survive as humans do, they're already the walking dead.

.

Cat isn't doing anything of importance that afternoon. The television in her room is on and it's displaying cartoons of overly animated characters and overbearing voice actors trying to over compensate to keep the children's attention around the world. Her eyes are half-lidded, and she browses through photos and profiles and videos but she's not really paying attention. Her consciousness is slipping and she thinks she could use a Cat nap (she giggles to herself when she makes the joke in her head).

However, just as she was falling pray to the lucid dreaming about to take over her mind, the television emits a loud pop and suddenly everything flickers off. Like a thick moon covering the sun, all source of light disappears in the wiring of the tungsten light bulbs, refusing to let light be shared with the world. Cat suppresses the feeling of a panic attack whirling into her brain, spinning the pitch black room, hallucinating spots of technicolor dots until her eyes have drunk in the darkness, turning midnight themselves.

Cat's hands spring to life and mechanically decreasing the brightness on her pear laptop to conserve battery. She gathers the white machine into her frail arms and maneuvers it about until she finds her cellphone. From then on, she uses the tinier machine to locate lighters around the house. She moves as if she's used to this isolation of light, but her frame shakes as if the fear of abandonment and being alone in greedy darkness, swallowing everything whole along with the barricades people build around their minds, is driving her every movement.

When she finds her father's spare lighter, she marvels when the flame ignites (it takes her about seven times to light it). Her fingers float upon the faint glow around the naked element, offering her security in company for fleeting moments. Like a child, she holds it close to her body as if keeping a secret and searches for the emergency candles they kept in the kitchen cupboard. She knocks few dishes to the floor as she rises on the tips of her toes to try and reach the candle supplies, but doesn't flinch as she hears the cracking of the ornate plates before they completely shattered around her miniature feet (because after all, she's used to walking on broken glass).

When her fingertips grab the corners of the box and pulls it down, Cat sets up candles about her house, illuminating every corner in the case of monsters laying in waiting to sink their claws into her flesh the second her guard lowers. No, she stops herself from thinking of a possible murderer lying in wait, ready to capture her and place her in an intricate trap in which she must fight for her life and realize that she really is lovely and that she shouldn't take her life for granted. Then, when she realizes this, it will be far too late, and she would die. Cat was always frightened of the Saw series for the sole reason that she would be a likely victim of the jigsaw killer and she would never be able to survive with her mindset and numb limbs.

With the house lit to a dim gray, she feels her way back to her chilled room and crawls back under the covers. She cradles her phone as she rocks back and fourth with her knees to her chest. "Why do I even exist?" she whispers to no one except the corpses in her closet. And she's just so lost that she can't handle living and existing within space. Cat just wants to punch through every window until the glass is spinning through the air and littering about her feet so she can let the storm in. But as she throws off the covers and practically rips open her fuschia curtains just to try and escape the collapsing and deteriorating hole she's crawled herself into, she simply stares out the window and into the storm.

She feels nothing.

Cat Valentine thinks power outages could be beautiful in poetic ways, but they were the most frightening, bringing in the reminder that she is alone forevermore.

.

Cat isn't surprised when she goes to take a bath that there was virtually no source of hot water coming from the tap. She would curse the storm, but her energy was draining and as she lets the water fill against the pounding noise of the rain upon window above it, she lights several candles about the small, cramped bathroom. Stripping bare, Cat stands, her shins pressing against the cold stained cream bathtub. She stares down, not registering the rising water level or the burning wax around her.

She feels a lot like a wax figure most of the time- painted plastic and blended into each of her environments. She's posed accordingly with an eerie fake but ever present expression. She seems alive, but never truly is. Some wax figurines are better than others, but never does wax mold every single flaw and blemish both inwards and outwards, because they're just the creation welded by the hands of others, an outside perception and never did they contain truth.

Truth that, as Cat lowered her body into the icy cold water, every Hollywood face was being forced deeper and deeper through the gashes in their skin with each picture flashed and taken without right. Intrusion was common, and so the stars adapted until they could do nothing but crack, and at the moment their guard lowered and their monsters emerged, loose and wild, they were trapped.  
Cat once heard that if you want to destroy something in this life, be it an acne, a blemish or the human soul, all you need to do is to surround it with thick walls. Humans constantly surround themselves with these exteriors and immerse these creatures they've made with mirror images of themselves until they burst at the carefully constructed stitching they've done. And they die. Cat thinks she might have a hope at surviving as one of the dead among the bright and living.

But then she remembers every one is dying, others just have different addictions to take the pain away. Tori adorns herself in sparkle and shines when she takes something from another because she isn't really important either way so she has to take and be. André relies upon notes and bar lines, drowning in the slur of trills and moving notes. Trina, oh Trina, always the one to drop to her knees if it meant she'd finally get a taste of what a synthetic love or lust felt like. Robbie was probably the worst liar, as he channeled his needs through his own fabricated puppet, unsatisfied unless he's pulling the strings and abusing power with a hunger in his eyes. Jade and Beck balanced each other like the gritty and glamorous side of an abusive push and pull relationship (and Cat thinks it's more of a security need than a love or a like or a lust, they just have to work or else).

Cat isn't entirely sure where she fits in with the puzzle pieces and so she takes a deep breath, her eyes fluttering closed with a shudder resonating up through her spine. As her back slides down the walls of the tub, she submerges her head, opening her eyes only then underwater. Her eyes take in nothing but distorted glows of candles floating further away like streetlights on the freeway- they flicker but never go out.

Suddenly, her lungs start screaming, and she revels in the feeling of the ice gathering between her legs and arms, settling in her belly button and into her pores. It gathered around her like blowing currents, and she wonders how different the ocean would be with this hurricane. Cat cannot hear a thing, the storm is dead to her and she wonders if she sunk in the ocean, would there be serenity of the calm underneath the thin line of water just above her line of sight?

Her throat hiccups and Cat can see the darkness eating away her peripherals. She's fading, and this brings her a comfort she doesn't quite understand. Her vocal chords contract and she can feel her body begin to shut down and struggle, but she sinks, her arms floating useless by her sides and every ounce of resistance or spirit gone from her corpse. She's already a ghost, she can't die twice. She thinks it's almost poetic when crimson wax drips onto the surface above her, and she watches it run like blood and she's fascinated by the wax of her blood floating in too visible veins under her paper thin sheets of skin.

But when Cat's mouth instinctively opens for air, a rush of bubbles cloud her point of view and she's seeing glimpses of herself and she's detached, watching herself sweetly die. Never did she truly feel alive than as her hand cut through the cold liquid, now piercing her skin like daggers, nipping at the traces of scars to bear entrance into her system. As she breaches the surface, her shaking hands slip on the edge of the bathtub, not finding the strength to completely pull herself to the candlelit glow of her bathroom.

Her throat burned as the liquid rushes to fill her empty body and she can't even see the ghosts of her present. Her hands finally grab something, and her body flails when a suddenly warm source sears through her dripping flesh and she can feel layers peel back. The candle wax attached to her forearm as the flame itself ripped open her wrist, proving to be ammunition for her body to completely shoot upright in the bath tub. She screamed, high and loud with such feeling she even burst her own ear drums with the sheer agony and rush of pain that she had never felt in such a long time. Cat hyperventilates, holding her victimized wrist in the freezing water and shakes.

Cat Valentine is just a little to young to be this empty, but she knows that she'll always have some place to go when her escapism overwhelms her.

.

Cat is shaking and stuttering as she stumbles back into her room, the navy blue towel wrapped around her body (but not tight enough as her tiny hands grabbed to keep it from falling off of her like butter fingers on monkey bars). Her wet hair is exposed, sticking to her face and collarbones, leaving trails of broken promises and empty lies behind her. She considers for a moment collapsing onto the matted and dirty white tiled floor of her bathroom until the candles burn out each and every one, naked and wrinkled like the shriveled shell she no longer wanted to keep. But instead, her mind autopilots and she's back in her room lying on top of her bed, laying a candlestick in its ornate holder on her bed side table. Candles from before burned upon the white chest at the foot of her bed, and Cat can see a puddle of red wax already spilling messily over the stained wood. But Cat does nothing, and instead watches the flames continue to melt the layers of wax down into puddles because she thinks catharsis is a good experience to have whether you're a clay figuring or a flesh wounded monster.

She's frightened, so Cat's frostbitten fingers fumble with her phone, trying to dial the only number racing through her mind, scrambling like eggs. She curses inwardly as she interchanges numbers in her blind haste. Finally her phone rings in trills of three and his picture comes up on screen and she's already completely lost, her heart jump starting like a kick drum.

On the fourth ring it connects. "Hello?"

Cat remains silent and her free hand flies up to her collarbones, grasping at the bone, tracing over the lines of her bones showing not enough to her liking. She attempts to find comfort there, but instead, her throat burns and her words come soundlessly from brain stutters. The voice repeats, "hello?" and its dripped in increasing frustration and exasperation. She feels trapped and she battles on a tight rope to try

"Hello! Hey, look, this isn't funny. Who is this? Hello? I swear-"

"Beck," Cat finally chokes out. She breaks and he breaks just a little, too.

"Cat?" Beck questions almost in a whisper as if the slightest, sharpest sound would cause a destructive avalanche and shatter the fragile painted pictures on glass jars. "Is everything alright?" But he finds it redundant since he already knows the undoubted answer.

"I can't feel anything and my eyes have stopped shining..." she trails off like there's more and it's resting upon the soft pallet of her throat but she can't quite seem to raise it up and push it out. Beck hangs onto her every word, sensing the erratic and strange pulse of her heart that he can almost feel through the phone. Cat remains motionless, her mouth hanging open just enough to give her a permanently hollow look etched in the inky rings worn below her eyes blotted on her skin from the extensive work of insomnia.

"Cat, hey, hang on. Tell me what happened." Beck shifts and the crackling noise through the phone into Cat's ear rings loudly and bounces up her spine and she shivers so violently she cannot suppress a squeal of pleading to feel, to need, to be. "I will always be here for you. No matter what happens or what you have done."

"I'm bruised and broken and I don't know what to feel anymore, but there's no escaping this. It's a continuous cycle and I'm trapping myself in this spinning circle and I'm becoming accustomed to it." she whimpers. "I'm scared..."

"Cat, you're being vague. Tell me what's happening. What's going on?"

"What does it mean to be real, Beck?" she asks simply and he's not so sure what she means. But by the way she addresses him, he is compelled to spew words even he himself isn't too sure of.

"To breathe, to believe, to love, to break." He thinks it's a little cliché, but he's hoping, wanting, needing to make her feel at least the tiniest bit better and to draw her from her own black cloud surrounding her body.

"But I have stopped breathing because I am so broken and I am addicted to this hopelessness and heartbreak just so I can feel something." she's quick in response and he can hear this calculated coldness admitting from her tone. He can picture her words lingering in the air like icicles, her breath visible in the still air.

"You are alive, Cat." and he thinks this is what she needs to know. A comfortable yet eerie silence passes through as Cat slips away into the corners of her mind, searching for ways of believing him. Beck waits, listening to her breath, light and almost non-existent and he can almost feel her heart flittering like hummingbirds behind cages of bones and skin.

"I'm drowning, Beck." she says finally. Beck says nothing, waiting for her to fight her mouth to speak or to withhold information further into her pores, attempting to sew herself shut. "I want to be enveloped in something. I'm being consumed by this feeling that everything is just a dream because I'm just so detached. I'm cold... I can't feel anything any more. It's guesswork when I should and how much I should. I'm numb, completely numb... I didn't even feel the freezing cold water in my bath until it filled my lungs and I began to choke. I was content there, underwater, seeing the world through this distorted surface. I felt at home, at peace. Everything was quiet. I think... I think I'm dying, Beck."

He says nothing when she finishes and processes it through each cog in his mind, running the words through a marathon type writer as if transforming this unwritten prose into song (because that's how they communicated). When her voice rung, sing-song in his brain, he closes his eyes and does nothing but exhale the comprehension of pure feeling outwards into the shaking air. "Why, Cat..?"

_I want to be lovely_, she considers, but then she corrects herself, "I need to be lovely."

"Jesus, Cat... you're beautiful, can't you realize that? Why..." Beck pauses in thought, sputtering over his words like a drunken shadow of a man who wasn't all there. "Why would you do this to yourself?"

"You're very sweet, Beck," Cat says quietly, her words deadpanning. "But I don't believe you."

"But why? Cat, I would never lie to you-"

"Every one lies." Cat cuts him off with a snap, painting herself in firecrackers and time bombs. Beck steps back, as if unsure how to proceed. He grunts faintly and Cat knows he has lost the ability to speak."What... what can I do?" Beck is surrendering white flags and arrows, choosing no longer to target Cat, his ability to aim and fire lost. Instead, he does his best impression of a firefighter attempting to stall the flames as he searches for a source of water, drawing from tears and sadness to muster out the courage to brave casting himself off into the flames and the chance of being burned alive.

_Nothing_, she replies in her head. But she knows what she desires and she's already exploded in a fire works display of cherry bombs and nuclear rockets so her jaw moves of its own accord and lips whisper, "love me."

She hears him choking at the back of his throat and she could picture his Adam's apple bob in attempts to clear his suddenly dry throat. Cat feels like she's falling. So she presses onwards like freight train cars following the conductor after he's already run the tip of the machine off a cliff into a certain foggy darkness.

"I want you to love me, like you're hanging onto the security of strings tied tightly to Jade or like your lust for adventures and sky diving into anything and everything with Tori." her mind is gone and she has no idea what she's confessing to any more, but the failing use of her throat wasn't actually the failing use of communication. "I adore you. You make me feel lovely- like it's alright to eat, like I can live in crowded seas of people and actually be a human. When we text, when we talk, my heart literally jump starts and I feel like breathing is an activity I do all the time and it's not labored. You are home to me. You make me feel like I have a home and that I don't just need to throw myself into blinding flashes of light and faceless crowds to lose myself just to feel like I belong."

She doesn't know quite what to say, so she says it anyways, "I want to be to you what you are to me. I want to draw maps and ride tangents and ideas to places of overrated beauty and moments. I want a chance. I want to be lovely for you."

Cat can feel her eyes burning, but she refuses this burst of emotion and leaves it just outside her window. She can't handle much more and she exhales a translucent plea of desire.

"Cat..." he begins and she can tell by the force of air driving the vowel of her name that she's banished herself to an oblivion of nothing but second thoughts and recollections. (But then again, that's all she ever was.)

"I think you're insanely amazing, you're one of a kind. And I adore your vibrance and the way sunshine drips from the tips of your hair and your eyes somehow sparkle like you're about to dive into a sea reflecting the lights of lightning bugs and stars. And I like the way your entire body shakes when you're laugh because you're just caught up in wanting to be included in something important. You're so perceptive even though it seems like you're never quite all there," his mouth is running off and it's rambling and she knows he only does this when he wants to avoid getting to the point or when he doesn't know quite what to say in response to a teacher so he tries to word it in the way he knows she wants to hear it. He always knows. His mind is racing just slightly ahead, trying to fabricate a conclusion he's unsure of. "I can't and I won't hurt you, Cat."

"Beck..." she's pleading with him. He stops mid track and everything falls silent save for a violent tap of a branch on her window. But she hears nothing, she feels nothing, she is simply misplaced in the wrong time, trying to look for what's right.

Beck swallows hard because they both know every unspoken undertone is so blatantly obvious like neon signs in black light raves.

"Stay... don't leave me here..."

Cat is going going going going going going-

"I'm sorry."

Gone.

"I'm sorry," he breathes out again, but it's the quiet monotony in his voice, attempting to suppress anything of a quiver that completely dismembers her heart in brutally tiny pieces. She breaks.

They stay there, nothing but silence passing in between the receivers. Cat listens to his breath, slow and supported, like a singer's breath should sound like. It's comforting, but it seems off which each resounding intake of breath, sharp and limbered as if it took every power he possessed to breathe, to feel, to live. She felt as if she were standing in a soundproof glass box, desperately trying to fracture the glass, wanting to reach out to them.

Cat attempts to even her breath, but the hiccups provide blips like cracking pop rocks in between her vocal chords. She's a word away from completely shattering and screaming, but instead tears just roll down her cheeks like an over animated silent film. But she's alone and there's no music. There's just pure raging sound and it's heavy, choking her like razor wire, breaking through skin.

Seconds pass and it's just them breathing, but she knows he's already gone and detached. But Beck is gracious, waiting, wanting to reassure himself that he didn't just murder another through very few spoken intentions (he wants to ease his guilty conscience). He's already gone and she's suddenly a corpse sitting on top of her grave of saturated, heated sheets. She's freezing, devoid of any blood or electrolytes pumping through her system or working organs. She was empty. She was a Black Dahlia.

He disconnects and there's a long dial tone that follows. Cat Valentine lets out the most soul wrenching, disembodied howl, leaving it to the wind to carry it out to the center of the storm. And hurricane cacophonies suddenly erupt in her ears and she can't hear anything because she's just slammed through the windshield of any sanity or reality she held onto by the small tips of bitten down nails.

Cat Valentine leaves him standing on her shore and she doesn't quite know what to make of anything any more, so she doesn't quite stop reaching for his hand, longing to pull him through to her.

.

The next day is quite warm, the sun shining down on the destruction of broken limbs of trees and sparkling telephone lines. Cat has to take a few minutes to readjust her eyes to the cloudless, perfect summer's day. But it was not summer and the view was a little taunting into thinking that maybe everything was okay, that she was okay and that there was hope. Cat Valentine much preferred hurricanes and solar eclipses by large anvil sized grey cirrus clouds and torrents of rain. She thinks maybe it's because she is a hurricane that she likes it when one of her kind passes through to remind her that she isn't entirely alone (_but she is, she is_).

Cat Valentine is a hurricane, reckless and chaotic, an out of control cyclone wreaking havoc and leaving only sheer and tragic destruction in her wake. She wants to scream, so she sends them to the wind for sensitive ears to hear but never quite so much as step outside the walls they built to help. But just like every hurricane, her very core is empty. She is a little less of a human and more of an entity and she buries herself in the middle of the protected calming center of the vicious thing. But she is isolated there and she continues to travel inside her shell, building this character and increasing in a maelstrom of this skeleton, this ghost.

Often times, the most beautiful days are those in which one wakes up to harsh thunder and torrential rains. Perhaps it's like a reverse placebo effect, Cat believes. She will not please herself because the day is already lost and somewhere along the way the secret loses a bit of its power and low low low expectations find themselves gradually climbing upwards on a ladder scale. Because it becomes less of a 'I will please myself with the day' and more like 'the day is gone, why not just float on by'. Just like that, the day is a gentle blur and there's nothing to be sad about because there's nothing to be happy about either. It's just Cat is Cat and she passes through the shallow waters and the world just turns. There's no anger or frustration, there's no excitement or anticipation. There's just a separated state of being and it just feels good to be a skeleton for once, hanging on a shelf with nothing to break oneself over. But it's the hurricanes that make her want to throw herself to the storm and find her way home.

Cat never thought that the tail end of the hurricane would bring such a calm after the storm. And she's a little sad to goodbye to one of her kind. So she doesn't and she waits and prays and wishes for the return of her siblings to one day sweep her out into the sea, crashing into the waves and feeling her skinny limbs tear apart to become one with them. And then she will sink, conducting an unprofessional dive in search to catch her toes in the undertow, asphyxiating herself on the feelings that she's home, she's going home.

Cat Valentine wants to go home.


End file.
